


a seagull in berkeley square

by vegetas



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Animal Transformation, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Multi, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-07
Updated: 2019-08-07
Packaged: 2020-08-11 13:56:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20154709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vegetas/pseuds/vegetas
Summary: It’s Ross’s gull, of all things. Rhodostethia rosea.





	a seagull in berkeley square

It’s Ross’s gull, of all things.  _ Rhodostethia rosea _ .

Or, more accurately, it will be called that sometime later, when Sergei Aleksandrovich Buturlin discovers its nesting grounds in the remote Siberian village.

For now it is still Ross’ gull, but only because when Francis brings it to the house in Aylesbury it is Ross who takes one look at it in the straw-lined box and nearly loses his footing in surprise.

“Where on Earth, did you get that thing Francis?” he exclaims, reeling, his hand finding the back of the nearest chair to steady himself. Of all the things, even creatures, he could have anticipated to be in the long wooden box that Francis carries into the parlor under his arm, the dove-like gull with its elegant head and delicate beak and unmistakable blossom pink chest is among the very last.

“In the middle of Berkeley Square,” Francis says, blinking down at the gull which looks up at them through the small opening Francis has made by sliding the top of the box. It peers back with the same indignant expression it gave Francis the first time he laid eyes on it, his boot casting a shadow on its back. “He was sat in the middle of the lawn. I nearly stepped on him.”

“You brought it all the way from Berkeley Square?” Ross breathes. “From London?” He does not know what is more unbelievable to him: that Francis ostensibly brought a seagull - by rail and coach - to his house, or that it is this particular seagull.

“I think he stunned himself,” Francis reports, the gull peering up with its glass-bead eye, head tucked down in the ruff of feathers wringing its neck. “So many windows in those houses. He must have smacked right into one.”

Ross gets the sensation that Francis has been waiting patiently to tell someone those exact words for the entirety of his journey. The trundling train ride and ribbiting lurch of the coach must have made him dizzy with it.

“Francis,” Ross continues, slowly, feeling a bit weak if he’s honest. The gull is not only a gull, but a living artifact of a life that Ross daily contends did not happen at all, to either of them. It is preposterous, he thinks at times, gnawing at his pipe, one of his four daughters nestled in his lap like an overgrown kitten, that he had ever set a single cleated boot onto polar ice. Entirely, utterly, preposterous.“I haven’t seen a bird like that since 1823 -”

Francis regards the bird which beds itself more into the straw with a faint rustle, tilting its beak up like it knows it’s being spoken about.

“He... is a long way from where he’s come from,” Ross says thinly, a pregnant pause passing between the two of them. He grimaces, leaning forward once more to look down into the box, no better than a schoolboy bent over a naughty playing card.

Francis lifts his hand and, demonstrating something unknown to Ross, takes his thick finger and pokes at the gull’s head through the opening. The gull’s neck retreats further down into the plush of its body and it adjusts its wings.

“Yes, I imagined so,” Francis finally answers, his voice the low creak of an oak beam settling. He retracts his hand once more, carefully closing the box. “I thought the girls might like to see him,” he remarks, animated with the stiff, doll’s posture of an automaton. “And you, of course, old boy. It’s a marvelous curiosity.”

Francis trails away, tucking one hand behind his back, persuading an awkward but affable smile onto his weathered face. Ross shakes his head, dismayed.

The fact that the little feathered covered fool has been windswept, quite miraculously, hundreds upon hundreds of miles from the barren wastes and gravel of the arctic circle to land on the manicured lawn of one of the poshest blocks in London draws mitigable reaction from the man, if any. Then again, there is pitiable little that would draw astonishment from Francis Crozier at this point.

“I -,” he begins. He finds Francis’ eye where it is waiting expectantly and sees a wince. “The girls will be impressed,” he sighs, for there is no denying that.

Within the hour they are crowded upstairs around the box - a larger one now, as the gull has been upgraded to an old wine case - that now sits in the corner of the guest room Francis occupies beside the window.

The tiny fair heads of the Ross girls huddle together like a clutch of eggs, their conspiring whispers excited and intrigued, for dear Uncle Francis has found a magnificent new toy to entertain them with for his summer stay.

When Francis feeds the gull a smoked herring through the slats in the pried-apart lid he is met by a simultaneous gasp and the rotund applause of small hands. The gull’s neck extends and its snap-trap of a beak fiddles the herring from his grasp and drops it with a plop into the straw where it nibbles, fastidious.

To say they are impressed was an incredible understatement.

“Thing’s got a regular room at Claridge’s,” Ross murmurs from behind the knot of his children, his wife looking on with a mixture of profound discomfort at a wild bird taking residence in her guest apartment and a starry glimmer of honest fascination. It makes her look impossibly young and Ross becomes overwhelmed with the longing to touch her waist. 

“I wonder if it would eat a biscuit,” she says, just before Ross can, and Francis turns and looks at her, holding the little saucer with two more herrings laid across it. 

“He’s quite fond of tea cakes,” he answers, entirely serious, which begets her startled, sparkling, laugh, her hands coming to cover her mouth. She breaks from Ross’ side to come stand beside Francis, a man she has always admitted to not understanding despite the saintly sincerity and patience with which she receives him.

“Would you like to try, Madame? He’s very docile,” Francis says in his whiskey growl, and his dear wife nods, lifting her pearl necklace to her mouth, teething it nervously as Francis guides her by the hand towards the crate, his daughters parting for her in a froth of little white gowns. 

🟍  
  


After much observation it is discovered that the gull is fond of tea cakes, as well as the aforementioned herring, smoked salmon, pickles, sardines, water biscuits, wheat biscuits, rye bread with jam, duck confit, pudding, chocolates, raisins, marmalade ices, khichri, and, to Francis’ intense delight, sherry.

He feeds the gull the delicacies that he has parceled through the day under the cool eye of the night, when the moon is full and sequining the sky and pouring unabated through his window like soapy wash-water over his mother’s laundry stone.

The gull’s whiter belly glows silver as it tosses about in its bedding, which whispers and crushes under its slight weight. Francis draws to the insistent familiarity of its rustlings which are too much like the rasp of dust and wind on the canvas of their camp tents; heartfelt whispers; straw in crates, which carry precious things.

He gently slips the lid away, his knees on the rug and his folded arms cradling his chin, picking apart the morsels to make it easier for its small mouth to manage.

The gull has trained him well, impatiently nipping his fingers, but the tip of its beak is blunt and couldn’t ever hurt him. It likes to take things from his hand, broken into near crumbs for it to peck and swallow. It’s eyes are dark, and playful, the blush on its chest deepening steadily over the weeks into a lovely true pink, like a Valentine’s rose is hidden amongst the feathers, soft as eiderdown. He loves to watch the chest of the gull grow with each breath, widening the patch in soft throbs.

“Do you know his spirit?” Francis whispers, finally, tongue pressing on his dry lips and eyes dizzy on the muddled lump of the gull in its nest. They are words he’s thought so many times, but withheld out of fear.

Francis is knelt on the carpet in only his bed shirt, his hair raked up awfully from turning on the too-soft mattress like a stripped screw. It has taken him much time to convince the courage out of his mouth. He decides it is fine with him if he is well and truly mad. The Ross’ love him dearly, or find him harmless, so if he is a babbling fool after all, whittled and knocked down to the posts, he is not entirely alone. Other opinions are less important, but to his mind most company is far too polite to bring such a thing up. It’s a happy circumstance of society.

He only hopes he will not break the spell by speaking.

The gull is so lovely and alive, thrumming with warm blood, every movement spilling more of the red down its front before his very eyes. At first, in this darkness, it seemed dark and wild like a wound, a mauling, but soon he learns the tenderness of the color - how vulnerable it is - as if he were a gentleman, with a stain of wine on his waistcoat.

“Do you know him? Did you find him wandering that place,” he insists, his hands now gripping the edge of the crate.

The gull looks at him sideways, turning its teardrop head slyly. What was once a blot of gray about its neck and eyes is becoming a perfect black line - delicate as a filigree - has become more pronounced over the weeks. He longs to run his finger along it, the little strap.

It is the pleasant perfect curve of a jacket collar, turned against the wind; James was always one to make even the most functional garment fashionable.

“James,” he murmurs, his head lowering, the word falling from his mumbling mouth and into the palm of his hand, smooth and slippery and heavy with such grief, and such love. A stone for him to worry in his pocket in all his moments of dread and anxiety and moments of pitiful stupidity such as these.

_ James. James. James. _

There is a flash and Francis reels back in surprise as the bird wings to the top of the box, poised on its bright orange, slender legs, surveying his apartment at the Ross’ with blinks and coy tilts of its head.

Standing atop the crate it is both smaller and bigger than he imagined and faces him directly, peering down the length of its beak at him with an expression that cannot be all animal. Its wings stretch languidly to the side, pointed tips brushing out, and it beats them a few times, testing. Satisfied, it flutters past Francis’ slack jawed face and perches on the headboard of his borrowed bed.

Francis turns, his back pressed against crate, clutching at his gown. One of his bare feet has caught the tassel edge of the rug and burrowed underneath in the clamor.

The gull looks down, appraising him, its shadow lengthened by the moonlight sprawling on the bed covers - tall, and limbs stretched, like a liquorice rope. It swells with breath - and then squeals loudly. A squeaky chatter, like a laugh. A wonderful laugh, entirely at his expense.

Francis feels his face furrow with sudden embarrassment.

“You must be quiet, James,” he stammers, blinking the tears from his eyes though they do not stop and fall off of his chin and into his collar. The gull stops its chuckling and haughtily draws itself up.

“Don’t be peeved,” Francis whispers, pawing his face with his balled shirt sleeve. “You will wake the house.” He clears his throat and, trembling, gathers himself up off the floor.

He gently replaces the crate lid, and the bird hops, landing gracefully on the pillow beside his own, snuggling down on the cushion with its legs primly drawn beneath it, wings folded. It breathes, and waits, and slowly Francis goes to the other side of the bed and carefully pulls back the coverlet and eases himself down.

“Satisfied?” he asks, and the bird beds down more, preening itself.

Francis lays his head down upon the pillow beside it and draws the blanket up to his chest, calmly folding his hands over his middle.

🟍  
  


“Aye,” Blanky says, stonily, staring at the gull where it sits on the armchair, pecking at a piece of soda bread. “That’s James, alright.” Blanky has come to keep him company for the few weeks that Ross and his girls visit their kin farther south.

Francis cannot prevent his grin, dragging one hand from his pocket to smack onto Thomas’ shoulder. He is so unbearably glad to see him.

“So you can tell,” he breathes, relieved. The bird glances up, stands, and takes off to float across the room, flitting just between their heads, pulling upwards to land on the top of a sideboard.

“Of course…,” Blanky says, fixated on the creature. “Still shameless, I see,” his old friend bites, hobbling over to brush the crumbs from the chair and sit himself down. Francis wishes to reach up and pet at James’ feathers, but he minds his manners. The oil from his hands, he has read, might disrupt those natural ones on James’ feathers and dirty him.

Not that James does not make for a hygienic bird. He requires, what Francis described to the scullery who brought in the wash tub for him, a great deal of fuss.

The scullery, in return, passed him a look that clearly stated her impression on the arrival of Dear Francis and his new pet.

James is in full flush, and the band around his neck is handsome and eye catching.

He is flirtatious, bowing his neck this way and that to show off his markings, puffing his chest with a ruffle and bratty squall.

“Sir James believes that he is in breeding colors,” Francis says, over the sound of James’ chittering, seating himself on the sofa sat opposite the armchair. “His sketches from before do not show that ring...nor the pink breast…”

“Proper lovesick. Red stockings and everything,” Thomas muses, grunting as he adjusts his leg, a heaving mass of wood and leather. “Whatever that means for you.”

Francis nods vacantly, staring at James from across the room, his hands palming at the knees of his trousers.

“But you can tell,” he murmurs, turning to Thomas whose eyes narrow.

His friend nods once, solemn.

“I cannot tell you what it means, Francis,” he says and Francis blinks at the carpet, clearing his throat. “But I can tell it’s him. Cheeky thing that he is. I can see it. Perhaps his heart flew out of him...or was carved out and planted somewhere. Whatever strange fuckin’ magic it is that coaxes things into possession in that place,” Blanky begins tugging his pipe from his pocket.

“I believed I was finally at the end of everything,” Francis breathes, the confirmation of his companion the one thing he has wanted most in this world. Blanky has always read the paths and cracks of his brain the way he could read ice - if not better. 

“Oh, we have been there and back,” Thomas barks with his salty laugh. “Who knows, I could be sharing the mania. But at that point, who gives a damn.”

They shift into silence, James entertaining them by floating back and forth, and plucking at the embroidery on one of Mrs. Ross’ throw cushions. He wheedles at it, pulling like a robin with a worm.

“I’m sorry I could not write to you sooner, Thomas,” Francis says. His fingers clasp and curl together between his knees. He swallows. “Two years… it’s a terrible way to prove what you mean to me.”

They watch James worry the thread, pulling and tugging, hearing his exasperated trills. 

“I wouldn’t have known how to reply, even if you had, mate,” Thomas answers, softly, but soon he is laughing again as James works it free and goes bowling backwards across the floor.

🟍  
  


It has been three months, and Francis does his best to not notice anything amiss. 

James’ appetite recedes. He takes only bread and water and salted fish. The red of his breast washes out in the sun streaming through the window into his crate, fading to pink and soft peach and molting away to white. The ring on his neck cracks and breaks apart, blotting to gray. 

Francis is constantly finding feathers everywhere, in drawers, and between cushions and the sheets. They shake loose from his jacket and stick to his shoes.

The Ross’ return from visiting relatives and the little girls do not want to look at their listless little friend in his box who no longer jumps and spins for treats or cackles at them or bows his head and tramps about with his bright red legs.

Sir James takes him shooting, and his wife makes him some dish he once mentioned enjoying so very long ago and he sits far after supper, beguiling her with all the stories that James knows far too well but are new to her, and make her blush and giggle into her white wine.

“Why have you not told me these stories, Francis,” she says, blinding him with her grin, her hand fitted within her husbands, thumb stroking across his wedding ring. With the other hand she toys her pearl necklace back and forth, the strand giving off a buttery sheen in the twilight. 

“The Old Man must have you trapped on a ship before he will tell you such things,” Ross insists, and Francis’ chuckles into his seltzer. “That way he is certain there is nowhere else for you to go flying off to, sweetest.”

They sit on the terrace until the sun sinks very low and Francis goes back to his room and falls upon the bed, drunk on the kindness. He has not felt so sun-warm in years.

James is in his bed, and he is not a gull. He is flushed to his collarbone, which Francis sees through his sleep-laden eyes, and stroking gently at Francis’ hand where it is lying on his stomach. He feels the callus of James’ foot as it drags along his leg, never-ending it seems, as James’ own legs are so long and slender - a path to heaven if Francis has ever seen one.

“Will you open the window, Francis?” he asks, kissing Francis’ chin. Francis frowns. 

“Whatever for?” he breathes, rolling towards James, covering him up with his body and James laughs into his ear, huffing, petting at the seam of his spine where it dips inward and dropping a kiss on the freckled round of Francis’ shoulder.

“Oh, dearest Francis,” James murmurs, nuzzling against his cheek. He squeezes him hard, his limbs folding around Francis till they are tight against one another. “If I asked you ever so nicely, would you? For me?”

Francis grunts, struggling to keep his eyes open. He feels James slowly release his grip, his elegant hand falling on the back of Francis’ hair.

“Would you be my darling,” James hushes, scratching soothingly at his scalp, lashes catching on his temple when he turns his head. “And open the window?”

Francis sighs and extracts himself, hobbling over to the window, arthritis nipping at his hips. He lifts the casement with a squeal.

“Happy?” he yawns. There’s a rustle of blankets and James pads over till they are chest to back, his lips brushing his ear.

“Oh, so very. You spoil me, Francis,” he says lightly, teasing his arms around his chest, their fingers intertwining for a moment. He disposes several kisses across his face, round of his nose nudging at his jaw. “But I am sorry to say I will not be able to lay you an egg this year - perhaps next?” He bites at his earlobe and Francis scoffs.

Wordlessly James moves in front of him, and for one moment Francis sees him clearly in the moonlight, with the white sheet draped over his arms and curved to show the faint shape of his shoulder blades, as he peers out the glass. From behind Francis can see the reflection of his eyes peering back at him, the bend of his smile, and the way it crinkles his cheeks. His tousled hair is parted unevenly at the center, angel’s wings curtaining his high, divine, forehead.

“James,” he says, realizing too slowly. He reaches to pluck the feather where it is peeking through the strands - his heart is beating up into his throat, it is so fast, and alive, inside him. He feels so awake.

Francis’ hand hovers on the latch of the window when he opens his eyes, rocking slightly on his feet. He sees the misty haze of morning tumbling over the lawn in Aylesbury. The air is warm, and fragrant, and there is a bird climbing higher, and higher, and higher, till it is lost among the clouds, sodden with golden light and fair pink shadows.

**Author's Note:**

> this was such a fun piece to write and i'm so delighted that i got to share it in the fitzier zine and now share it with everyone <3 
> 
> many thanks to all the inspiring creators - their talent knows no bounds and i'm lucky to be a peer <3


End file.
